Efficient responses to climate change require accurate estimates of both aggregate damages and where and to whom they occur. While specific case studies and simulations have suggested that climate change disproportionately affects the poor, large-scale direct evidence of the magnitude and origins of this disparity is lacking. Similarly, evidence on aggregate damages, which is a […]

Using a dataset of 15 million UK job adverts from a recruitment website, we construct new economic statistics measuring labour market demand. These data are ‘naturally occurring’, having originally been posted online by firms. They offer information on two dimensions of vacancies—region and occupation—that firm-based surveys do not usually, and cannot easily, collect. These data […]

Barber and Odean study the relationship between trading activity and returns. They find that households who trade more have a lower net return than other households. They argue that these results cannot emerge from a model with rational traders and instead attribute these findings to overconfidence. In contrast, we find that household financial choices generated […]

Chinese local governments wield their enormous political power and administrative capacity to provide “special deals” for favored private firms. We argue that China’s extraordinary economic growth comes from these special deals. Local political leaders do so because they derive personal benefits, either political or monetary, from providing special deals. Competition between local governments limits the […]

We introduce a computationally tractable dynamic equilibrium model of the automobile market where new and used cars of multiple types (e.g. makes/models) are traded by heterogeneous consumers. Prices and quantities are determined endogenously to equate supply and demand for all car types and vintages, along with the ages at which cars are scrapped. The model […]

Unemployment rate continues to decline in July 2015.

The unemployment rate continues to decline in July 2015 for most of the metropolitan areas within the United States. 92% of the metropolitan areas in the Nation experienced lower unemployment rates than a year earlier while only 20 metro areas showed higher rates. In 8 out of 389 metropolitan areas, rates were unchanged. Metro areas within both Dakotas had unemployment rates below 3 percent, as well as Lincoln in Nebraska and, Ames and Iowa City. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), “a total of 187 areas had July Unemployment rates below the US figure of 5.6 percent, 185 areas had rates above it and 15 areas had rates equal to that of the nation”.

The highest unemployment rate, locally speaking, was in Yuma Arizona, which registered 26.6 percent for the month of July 2015. El Centro in California had the second highest unemployment rate, 24.2 percent. Otherwise, the lowest rate (2.3 percent) was in Bismarck, North Dakota. Following data from BLS, “of the 51 metropolitan areas with a 2010 Census population of 1 million or more, Austin-Round Rock, Texas, had the lowest unemployment rate in July, 3.5 percent”.

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In regards to employment levels, the largest over-the-year increase happened in New York-Newark-Jersey City where the difference in July 2015 is 164,400 more jobs than in July 2014. The Los Angeles metropolitan area added 157,500 over-the-year. In Texas, the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington also augmented the payroll by 121,700 jobs over-the-year. On the other hand, the largest decrease in employment level occurred in New Orleans-Metairie where the metric contracted by 3,800 jobs. This contraction also happened in Davenport-Moline-Rock Island (Iowa and Illinois) in which the decrease was around 3,600 jobs. Barnstable Town in Massachusetts also declined its employment level by 3,000.

Although these data have not been adjusted by season yet, estimates are derived from a comprehensive model-based approach that covers several data sources. In fact, since the average over-the-year change in state rates is 0.7 percentage points, current estimates are somehow reliable. The Local and Urban Statistics (LAUS) program at BLS utilizes a method that aggregates weighted data from the Current Population Survey (Household data), the Current Employment Statistics (Establishment data), and State Unemployment Insurance programs. Estimates for the State-level data are produced by using time-series models, though. The BLS uses 90 percent confidence level when reporting statistically significant data.

Below are the graphs for the unemployment rate in the fifty states and its correspondent metro areas.